


Pinned Under Glass

by comradeocean



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2018-01-26 14:04:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1690961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/comradeocean/pseuds/comradeocean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the comics, Bolivar Trask has a mutant daughter whose unstably manifested power is time travel.</p><p> </p><p>  <span class="small">(Though this has very little to do with time travelling. or anything from the movie really.)</span></p>
            </blockquote>





	Pinned Under Glass

Tanya does not like to come down here alone. But every time her father peers at her with his beautifully sad eyes and asks  _Won't you fetch the old field notebooks for me, dear_ , she swallows past the surge of panic and answers as if it were just any item misplaced out of his convenience.

"Of course, Daddy. The ones shelved in Sub Sector E?" She doesn't know why she bothers. They both know the answer is always the same.

"Yes, dearest. The ones in Sub Sector E."

Every trip there is a test and she has to remind herself with each step along the way to keep breathing. Because later when she stands before him with a stack of notebooks carefully balanced against her arm, she will feel as frozen and caught as the specimen under glass, until he's satisfied with what he sees, releasing her from his scrutiny. She doesn't know what he's looking for, won't be able to relax her diaphragm until there is a door between them again. Where the air wooshes back into her body like a flock of pigeons taking off.

She's been told it's not always the best idea to anchor time in something so fragile as a breath, or the absence of one. But there is something consistent about the pauses between things, and if she had to get lost at all, she would much prefer to slip away on a sigh. She has seen what happens to those who struggle, those who fight at the wrong moment. She plans to make more careful choices, to choose correctly.

All things are breakable. Containable. What are people, once they become only component things? Perhaps that is the reminder she is meant to understand with each visit to those  _things_ , ostensibly to retrieve the observations her father had made, of  _other things_. Sometimes it is easier to pretend the jagged fibres are the unfeeling relics of an ancient god. Kept with other excavated mementos under state-of-the-art temperature and moisture control. It is awful in every way that things so destroyed could be breathtakingly beautiful.

Tanya would like to believe the unease that dispassionately well-lit trophy case inspires is universal, and not something that could be attributed to her particular temperament. Her errand had once intersected with the interrupted patrol of a security officer transfixed before it in what could have been any combination of horror, fascination, disgust, and awe. His baton was levelled in a rictus grip at the panel with the wing and she didn't want him to get in more trouble on what was probably his first day.

This was one of the many areas of the complex her father was very conscientious to keep under constant surveillance. Other newly promoted Trask employees had been taken aback by the exhibits when they started venturing into this sector, but she had never seen any so greatly affected as this guard. When the possibility he might actually strike the glass seemed to become more and more real, she shuffled her feet and politely cleared her throat.

The resulting transformation was instantaneous as it was impressive. The previous tableau was seamlessly replaced by an utterly forgettable proceeding of modern industry: a boring man fulfilling the obligations of his boring task, bored. It was as if nothing had ever been amiss and in the span of another breath he was walking out towards an adjoining corridor. They nodded at each other as he passed.

When she returned upstairs, her father received the notebooks with such gravity that Tanya was certain this was the time everything changes. There were spots crowding the corners of her vision and still she didn't breathe. She was either going to fall into the timestream or her father was finally going to – going to – It was terrifying that she still didn't know what both of them were waiting for him to do, and she didn't find out then either. He had finally smiled his beautifully sad smile, gestured forward for her to receive a kiss on the cheek. And again she had passed inspection.

Much later, she wonders if she had somehow imagined it all. Which is absurd, that look on the security guard's face was burned into her memory like an afterimage, not anything close to a remnant from some dream or a hallucination.

And then she thinks about the differences between the discipline of walking towards something, versus the discipline it takes to walk away. Wonders which of the two she will be in need of, which gods she should worship to resurrect the fervour of that gaze in her own body.

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't read any of the comics! This is just idle speculation, about that display case, that got away from me.


End file.
